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Netflix’s ‘You People’ wasn’t funny at all to my Black and Mexican Jewish family
(JTA) — As a couple that is two parts Jew, one part Black, and all parts lovers of comedy, my husband and I sat with hopes (maybe not high ones) to watch Netflix’s “You People.”
It’s not often that we see our cultures represented together in buzzy movies, especially not ones set in Los Angeles, the city we love so much, and with the comedy king Eddie Murphy in the cast, and we were excited about the possibility of seeing ourselves reflected in the story of blended Black and Jewish families.
Unfortunately, at the expense of comedy greats including Murphy, Jonah Hill, Deon Cole, Elliot Gould and Julia Louis Dreyfus (with cameos by so many others!), the movie ended up being a painful reminder of how our family — made up of Mexican and Black Jews with Ashkenazi roots — so often must explain and justify our existence in Jewish and Black spaces.
The movie starts off with Jonah Hill’s character very comfortably recording his podcast about “the culture” (ostensibly, hip-hop culture?) with his Black, queer best friend, seeming to set the stage for the progressive coolness that will later allow him to date someone who is not “square” and potentially Black. Hill’s character loves rap music, sneaker culture and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, and he knows not to say the full title of that song from Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch The Throne” album.
Yet we find him in scenarios that time and again have him playing into uncomfortable tropes — like saying “our boy” when referring to Malcolm X — as he quickly and nervously falls into defining Black culture at its most reductionist form. It’s no surprise then, that the film goes on to portray Blackness as a monolithic, one-dimensional stereotype.
It doesn’t get any better when we see Hill’s character in a Jewish space: High Holiday services at the Skirball Cultural Center, here serving as a synagogue. There and throughout the movie, Jews are portrayed as white and uncool — sometimes aggressively so, almost as if the writers didn’t trust the audience to know this family is Jewish if not for the mom complaining about tattoos and trying to set up her son with a highly educated daughter of a friend.
My husband and I have been to the Skirball Center on many occasions, one of them being a wedding for two supremely cool Jews of color. But you would never know from the movie that such an event could ever take place, or even that Jews of color exist in Los Angeles — even though, ironically, the actor playing Jonah Hill’s eventual love interest is Black and identifies as half-Jewish. Instead, in creating the world for “You People,” the writers continue a dated tradition of movies that overly simplify the worlds they depict based on racial binaries.
This flattened view of the world is especially lamentable because the rom-com genre has at its fingertips the easiest blueprint: All families are ridiculous and oftentimes the blending of two families even more so. Within my family alone, there are several different cultures that consistently push against each other in humorous ways. There’s “nerd culture,” “comic book culture,” “skate culture,” “food culture.” Even in my culturally blended family, where my Mexican immigrant parents regularly share meals with my Black mother-in-law, the resulting humor has never been about racial differences. In a story where the message is that we can all get along, we don’t need the punchline to be about race.
The Silversteins, from left: Joshua, Ami, Laila, Shel and Cinthya, outside of their Los Angeles home in 2021. (Casey Durkin/NBC)
“You People” could have told a story in which Jonah Hill’s character actually subverts the standard narrative, maybe one in which his character realizes how easy it is to fetishize Blackness and through experiences with his father-in-law comes to find the richness and fullness of Black culture that can even be expanded by his own Jewish background when blending his family with his fiancée’s. Or a movie in which a member of the Nation of Islam tries to openly accept a Jewish son-in-law and, rather than using Louis Farrakhan as an awkwardly divisive plot point, we see instead a Muslim Eddie Murphy try to find ways to connect with modern day hip-hop culture. Either option would allow the audience to see the layers in these characters that we are so often erased from narratives about Jewishness or Blackness.
Instead the writers opted for the easiest avenue: comedy based on persistent racial “othering.” But the differences shown are no longer based on any actual truth. They are based on beliefs we have been told to keep repeating in an effort to keep the agenda of white supremacy intact. The writers are depicting worn-out “differences” that don’t represent an authentic Jewish or authentic Black experience. Presenting any cultural experience as the “authentic” one is just another way of saying stereotypes are true — and that’s not funny at all.
Several years ago, my family participated in Ava Duvernay’s life-swap show in which we traded homes and experiences with a family of white Mormons. Our goal at the time was to show examples of coexistence and to demonstrate how contemporary identities are multilayered. But we also hoped that the experience would help us find greater acceptance as Jews of color, which still feels generally elusive. “You People” underscored for us why.
At one point during the life-swap, my husband said to me, “Listen, when you’re Black and Jewish, and everything hurts, laughter is the best medicine.” But laughter doesn’t come easily when the jokes only make sense if you don’t exist.
Sure, there were a few chuckles in my house during “You People.” The comedian Mike Epps was funny as he always is, and I laughed when Jonah Hill showed up to his date in a tie-dye sweatsuit, in a very L.A. move. But for nearly two hours, all I could think about was how “You People” feels like a movie for folks who are clinging to stereotypes because it helps them feel comfortable with their own cultural identities, which once were dominant but now must share real estate with others that are equally authentic. By confining the definition of culture to a singular idea of “race” this movie prevents an important conversation from moving forward. And that means my family, and so many other Jewish families, are once again left behind.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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Conservative and Christian movies are coming for Hollywood
A star-studded new movie set in a Soviet prison is coming out in November. James Franco and Rob Lowe anchor the cast of Confession, playing a brutal prison guard and an imprisoned dissident professor, and a disheveled Nick Nolte appears as a fellow prisoner.
These actors were once huge gets, and their names could convey legitimacy to a project. Nolte and Franco both have received Academy Award nominations. Lowe was a member of the Brat Pack, and was a regular on The West Wing.
Confession, written by Ben Shapiro and produced by the rightwing tabloid-esque news site The Daily Wire, is not the expected fare for actors with that kind of name recognition; Shapiro’s screenwriting aspirations have been the target of ridicule for years.
Nevertheless, this isn’t the only Daily Wire production getting big names; Danny Trejo signed onto a pro-ICE movie about Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, and Jonathan Majors led Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels earlier this year.
Each one of these actors has been, in some way, canceled or in career doldrums so may have been more open to working with The Daily Wire. And some have claimed that they did not know who Shapiro was, or what his politics were; Trejo’s son, Gilbert, said his 82-year-old father did not endorse ICE and was misled about the movie before he signed his contract.
Movie studios have struggled through the pandemic and the streaming era, both of which have tanked box office receipts, leaving the field open for movies from offbeat production studios. In addition to The Daily Wire, there has been a whole ream of Christian movies attempting to shift the stereotype of bible movies — that they’re preachy, low-budget straight-to-TV affairs with cardboard acting — to something more prestigious, or at least profitable.
The Christian company Angel Studios has been placing screenings of the half philo-semitic, half-antisemitic Jesus TV series The Chosen in movie theaters across the country, produced the right-wing hit The Sound of Freedom and is pumping out faith-based movies like the animated King of Kings Christmas story and David, a kiddie movie about the biblical king. Recently, Pinnacle Peak Pictures, another faith-based production company, premiered Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, another bible movie that was notable enough to merit a review in The New York Times. (Though admittedly it wasn’t a particularly positive one.)
For decades, Hollywood, and the media industry at large, has been associated with liberalism, progressive politics and diversity. (This is part of why conservative conspiracy theorists often insist that Jews control the media.) Even when conservatives are in power, satirical movies have poked fun at the ruling class — Team America: World Police spoofed George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while M*A*S*H critiqued Richard Nixon. During the current Trump administration, we’ve seen One Battle After Another lambasting immigration policies and rising white nationalism, Eddington on misinformation and populism, and The Apprentice depicting Trump directly.
But a rising number of higher-budget, bigger releases from the right wing, whether The Daily Wire’s conservative political parables or the Christian fables, are bringing a new kind of messaging — about the importance of God and country, about gender roles, about about the centrality of Jesus to the U.S. — to the American movie-going public.
This is no accident. A group of powerful conservative Christians, many of whom worked on Project 2025, are proponents of the Seven Mountains Mandate, a blueprint for Christian nationalism that instructs Christians to gain influence and control over the “seven mountains” of society — which include media, entertainment and the arts. The Mandate is part of the New Apostolic Reformation, a decentralized evangelical movement embraced by millions of Americans.
Jeremy Boreing, the director of many Daily Wire movies — though he has since left the company — said on a podcast hosted by businessman Patrick Bet-David that “It had always been part of our strategy to move into making culture, not just criticizing culture” as a way of proving that “there is a future where conservatives aren’t losing. There’s a future where we have political power and cultural power.”
Cultural power, of course, requires more than just a lot of movies; they have to be well-done, or at least appear to be. Previous Daily Wire productions, as well as other right-wing, MAGA movie ventures, have been hacky. Lady Ballers, about an unsuccessful men’s basketball team pretending to be women so they can dominate the league, was an unsubtle, unfunny and ultimately unwatchable spoof of transgender athletes. And even plenty of higher-budget attempts, like Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, can still fall victim to wooden acting and writing.
But now, with the financial success of movies like The Sound of Freedom and biblical parables like The Chosen, bigger stars are being drawn to projects like the Daily Wire’s lineup of pro-ICE, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ movies. With those bigger stars may come new audiences who might not have watched a Christian movie or Daily Wire project otherwise. And where there is money and viewers, mainstream Hollywood will go, too, no matter how progressive people expect the industry to be. We’ve already gotten a biblical epic from Amazon Prime, with The House of David, and there are likely to be many more to come.
After all, it wasn’t so long ago, after all, that Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was the biggest movie in town.
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